When Rachel Moore '92 first worked for the American Ballet Theatre - one of the most famous dance companies in the world - in the 1980s, she spent her days leaping and pirouetting with the rest of the corps de ballet. Now, armed with degrees from Brown and Columbia Business School, Moore has returned to ABT to lead the business side of the company.
Before Moore's appointment as executive director of ABT in April 2004, the company had perennial financial problems. "When I came to ABT there had been a lot of change in the staff and directors. Morale was low," she said. Since Moore joined the company, it has shaken off its persistent financial problems and increased its endowment from $8 to $15 million. ABT is now operating at a modest budget surplus for the first time in six years.
The erratic nature of non-profit income makes Moore's job especially challenging. "Non-profit arts institutions are not the most stable economic models. You are always fragile because half of your income is donations and that can vary radically from year to year depending on the economy and any number of factors," she said.
Over the next five years, Moore plans to build an endowment for ABT that will prepare the company for any financial bumps in the road ahead.
Moore said the key to her success was her experience in the ballet world as a dancer with ABT from 1984 to 1988. "Because I had danced with the company, I knew the culture very well, and I was a known quantity. The artistic side of the institution trusted that I wouldn't sell them down the river," she said.
Moore said she first became involved in ballet when she decided to casually take some ballet classes with a friend at the local art center in Davis, Calif. "By the time I was 13, I was taking ballet classes six days a week and it had become my passion in life," she said.
At age 18, she came to New York to fulfill her dream of dancing with ABT. While she loved dancing and working with artists of such high caliber, dancing is not a "career for the faint of heart," she added. "It's a very difficult career, highly competitive and extremely physically demanding. It's an intense experience."
After an injury forced her to leave the company, Moore came to the University as a Resumed Undergraduate Education student. "I always knew that I would eventually go back to school. My father was an economics professor, so a college education was always very important to my family," she said.
As a 24-year-old seasoned professional ballet dancer applying to college, Moore was attracted to the University's open-minded admissions policies. "Brown was one of the few schools that was accepting of nontraditional students. Most of the other Ivy Leagues would not look at you if you if you were over the age of 19 or 20," she said.
Moore was inspired by the University's supportive intellectual environment. "I couldn't believe that I was given this huge opportunity to read books and talk about things just for the intellectual inquiry. There was no professional outcome that had to happen," she said.
After graduating with degrees in ethics and political philosophy, Moore attended Columbia Business School. She began her career in non-profit management in 1994 as a development officer for the National Cultural Alliance. Before moving back to ABT, she served as director of Boston Ballet Center for Dance Education.
Although she no longer dances, Moore said she still feels she is a part of the creative process of producing ballet.
"Even though I am not creating the art, it's very satisfying to know that what I am doing is making sure that great art gets to people," she said. "Just having a balanced budget is not inspiring unto itself. But a balanced budget that will ensure that you can do Swan Lake to the highest quality, raising the bar of what constitutes excellence in art - that's an inspiring goal."
